Subject Headings

Posting on Facebook

Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy andapplication settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Cases for Examination

Paul Mavrides has been an artist since 1976, working in a variety of media, including comics and graphic art. When he sold original pieces of artwork to clients, he charged sales tax on the transaction, and paid the tax to the BOE. When he filed his state tax returns in 1991 for the 1990 calendar year, he listed his sales income and the tax owed. He also listed his royalty income for his comics work, and filed for an exemption from tax for that income.

Cartoons and comics have been a part of American culture since this nation’s formation. They have been viewed as a threat to society and a cause of juvenile delinquency; they are scandalous, indecent, and obscene. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (“CBLDF”), a New York-based non-profit organization, provides legal defense for comic artists, collectors, distributors, and retailers who face civil and/or criminal penalties for the creation, sale, and ownership of comics, cartoons, graphic novels, and related works.

On February 10, 2010, Christopher Handley, a manga collector in Iowa, was sentenced to six months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release running concurrent with five years of probation, as well as forfeiture of material seized by police after pleading guilty to possessing manga featuring “obscene visual representations of minors engaged in sexual conduct” in May of 2009.